Below are the first 10 and last 10 pages of uncorrected machine-read text (when available) of this chapter, followed by the top 30 algorithmically extracted key phrases from the chapter as a whole.Intended to provide our own search engines and external engines with highly rich, chapter-representative searchable text on the opening pages of each chapter.
Because it is UNCORRECTED material, please consider the following text as a useful but insufficient proxy for the authoritative book pages.

Do not use for reproduction, copying, pasting, or reading; exclusively for search engines.

OCR for page 5982
Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA
Vol. 96, pp. 5982-5986, May 1999
Colloquium Paper
This paper was presented at the National Academy of Sciences colloquium "Plants and Population: Is There Time?"
held December 5-6, 1998, at the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Center in Irvine, CA.
From pre-Hispanic to future conservation alternatives:
Lessons from Mexico
ARTURO GOMEZ-POMPA~ AND ANDREA KAUS
Department of Botany and Plant Sciences and Institute for Mexico and the United States, University of California, Riverside, CA 92521-0124
ABSTRACT In this paper, we review some past and
present trends in biodiversity conservation in Mexico and
explore possible explanations of why, in spite of this long
history of depredation and ineffective conservation policies,
the ecosystems have been able to cope with and retain most of
their biological components. We suggest a hypothesis based on
the persistence of a complex mosaic of past and present
traditional land uses as a possible explanation for this resil-
ience. We propose an agenda for the scope of future conser-
vation research and policy, particularly the need to take the
socioeconomic context of environmental degradation into
account. We put forth a series of questions that we think need
to be investigated if the conservation research community is
to participate in developing solutions for the future welfare of
the human species and of biodiversity on earth.
In 1995, Mexico had 94 million inhabitants with a growth rate
of 2.1% per year (1~. In the last 50 years, Mexico has lost most
of its mature humid rain forests, and at 500 to 800 thousand
hectares of forest lost per year, it has one of the highest
deforestation rates in Latin America (2~. Most of its rivers are
polluted, and many parts of the country suffer from water
shortages. Immense areas show environmental degradation
and biological impoverishment. In addition, income distribu-
tion among the nation's citizens is remarkably polarized, with
more than 50% of the population living at the poverty level,
20% at the extreme poverty level, and a small group of
individuals who are among the richest people on earth (3~.
In this context, it is striking that Mexico is also one of the
most biologically diverse countries of the world (4, 5~. It has a
wealth of raw natural resources, such as oil, timber, range land,
and minerals. The nation has adopted and developed various
conservation models to establish systems of national parks,
wildlife refuges, watershed protected areas, marine sanctuar-
ies, world heritage sites, botanical and zoological gardens, and
biosphere reserves (6~. The country contains an impressive
number of conservation groups and a well recognized ecolog-
ical scientific community that has influenced the development
of a large system of recently protected areas now covering
more than 10% of the nation's territory.
In addition, Mexico is a site where remarkable cultures have
developed, flourished, and collapsed over the last 3,000 years.
The nation boasts an impressive cultural diversity, with more
than 8 million people belonging to more than 50 cultures (ref.
7 and www.ine.gob.mx/gacetas/gaceta38/pmal2.htm). It has
a wealth of empirically based conservation practices stemming
from the traditions of indigenous cultures, dynamic and mod-
ern descendants of customs that predate Spanish contact.
Along with these cultures and practices, Mexico has an im-
pressive number of resilient ecosystems that have convolved
with human activities over thousands of years (8~.
PNAS is available online at www.pnas.org.
Despite this seeming cornucopia of biological, ecological,
and cultural diversity, Mexico has not been able to slow present
trends of environmental degradation and destruction. Biodi-
versity losses, however, have not reached predicted levels. In
this paper, we examine past and present conservation actions
and trends to explore why in spite of a record of depredation
and ineffective conservation policies the country's ecosys-
tems have been able to adjust and retain most of their
biological components.
Conservation as Sustainable. In the last few decades, de-
velopment the former antithesis of conservation has come
to encompass concepts of sustainable land and resource use to
ensure that development "meets the needs of the present
without compromising the ability of future generations to meet
their own needs" (9~. This concept coincides with the broad
concept of conservation championed by Aldo Leopold (10)
and followed by most conservation organizations today.
In this paper, however, we suggest a subtle permutation of
the definitions of sustainable development and conservation to
encompass those actions that provide environmental and
biological safeguards for future generations without compro-
mising the needs of present ones. We believe that the world
must realize fully its responsibilities and commitment to the
individuals and communities of today who, by design or
default, maintain the natural resources on which we all rely. In
addition, conservation that sacrifices basic human needs at
present for those of the future is fundamentally unjust. It
provokes righteous resentment among local inhabitants and
escalates boundary disputes at the edges of protected areas, an
inherently unsustainable approach to biodiversity protection.
The environmental dilemma has become increasingly com-
plex with each successive wave of human expansion, techno-
logical advance, and consequent environmental changes. Each
change brings on a new set of circumstances to confront and
a new sense of urgency as local problems take on global
proportions and vice versa. Neither national conservation
policies nor local practices have resolved rural development
demands or reduced current threats to biodiversity, rampant
poverty, and resource depletion. In fact, conservation in
Mexico sharply reflects the separation of national policy from
the interests of rural communities, as well as the chronic
neglect and submergence of indigenous and peasant popula-
tions (11~.
Modern Descendants of Pre-Hispanic Approaches. Re-
search and public opinion regarding native peoples is filled
with conflicting perceptions regarding their impact on the
environment. Early native Americans are blamed for the
extinction of megafauna (12) but are acclaimed for their
skillful management of forests and wildlife (13, 14~. For
example, the Maya civilization, one of the most successful and
well known cultures in tropical America, fed and sustained
Alto whom reprint requests should be addressed. e-mail: floramex@
citrus.ucr.edu.
5982

OCR for page 5982
Colloquium Paper: Gomez-Pompa and Kaus
human populations over many centuries in a tropical environ-
ment at numbers and densities well beyond those found in the
same place today.
However, researchers also claim that the Maya overex-
ploited their environment because of overpopulation (15~. The
common perception is that Maya mismanagement of forest
resources led to the civilization's ultimate collapse about 1,100
years ago (16~. The most recent explanation for the collapse of
the Maya comes from Hodell, Curtis, and Brenner (17) who
suggest that a prolonged dry-period event in the region
coincided with the collapse of the classic Maya. It seems that
the ecological basis of the Maya's highly efficient food-
production technology disappeared as a result of a climatic
change.
The survivors from this period continued their activities in
the same region and began a new cycle of population growth
that lasted 600 years until the arrival of the Spanish. Far from
a pristine environment, the first explorers found a forest region
that was densely populated. Cristobal Colon described His-
paniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic) and Tortuga as
densely populated and "completely cultivated like the coun-
tryside around Cordoba" (18~.
Although the evidence indicates that the two cycles of
Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 96 (1999J 5983
immense areas were abandoned to undergo natural regener-
ation. Two Mexicos, indigenous Mexico and colonial Mexico,
emerged, and they coexisted and intermingled for nearly 4
centuries, albeit one was subjugate to the other. The former
was comprised of the rural, still largely indigenous population
descendent from pre-Hispanic cultures; the later was what
Bonfil (11) calls "Mexico imaginario," a minority but domi-
nant society structured around the norms, aspirations, and
beliefs of Western civilization.
Today, however, the two Mexicos overlap geographically, as
mass production techniques of forestry and agribusiness clash
with smaller local practices, many of them based on traditional
systems of shifting agriculture. Remote no longer means
removed. Bulldozers and chain saws cut into formerly isolated
regions. Cattle graze over former miIpas. Ranches displace
rancher~as. Subsistence agriculture merges the traditional
milpa with livestock production, and valuable natural re-
sources are exported to far-off urban centers.
. :
The Maya are not unique in this regard. Ecological and
anthropological evidence indicates that many other indigenous
groups in different geographic regions had their own ap-
proaches to natural resource management that resulted in
deliberate or de facto conservation strategies (8, 25, 26~. Each
group in each geographical site was able to manage its
resources with the knowledge accumulated over millennia and
under different population pressures; however, we do not want
to suggest that aboriginal populations have not also overex-
ploited particular resources or degraded their environments. It
is the range of indigenous transformations of the environment,
from conservationist to exploitative, from high to low popu-
lation densities, that needs to be understood if the past is to
provide an informed perspective for the future.
Two Mexicos. The New World was peopled by civilizations
that were not understood by the Spanish; subsequently, these
civilizations were decimated, weakened, and suppressed by
arms, religion, and disease. Mexico was depopulated, and
A system of protected areas represented perhaps a visionary
move for the country, but the government has treated these
sites as if they exist in a vacuum, unperturbed by human
intervention or ecological change. It presumed the absence of
humans before the establishment of the parks, land tenures
issues were not resolved, and plans or funds for management
were mostly nonexistent. As paper parks, however, the sites
protected the environment by dint of their legal status and the
low population densities in the regions when they were estab-
lished. The government discovered one of the unfortunate

OCR for page 5982
5984 Colloquium Paper: Gomez-Pompa and Kaus
Table 1. Active protected areas of Mexico, 1998
Category of
protected area
No. Area, hectares
8,115,730
1,385,334
13,023
203,439
1,660,502
418,941
Percentage of
total protected
area
Biosphere reserve
National park
Natural monument 3
Natural resources area 7
Area of flora and fauna 9
In process
Total
21
63
111
68.8
11.7
0.1
1.7
14.1
3.6
11,796,969
100
Data were provided by the Consejo Nacional de Areas Protegidas.
truths regarding the protection of nature in most developing
countries: "Decrees cost nothing, they hurt no one and provide
adornment; and in some cases, they even protect nature" (6~.
Unfortunately this problem exists in many other tropical
countries (30~.
In 1977, Mexico became one of the first and few countries
to adopt and develop the biosphere reserve system proposed
Man and the Biosphere Program of the United Nations
Educational Science and Cultural Organization. Mexican sci-
entists felt that science, rather than urban sentiment or a sense
of aesthetics, needed to be the basis of environmental protec-
tion for human and ecological welfare alike. They thought that
the biosphere reserve concept would be a good solution,
reconciling the contradictions of overlapping land use and
conservation goals. In many ways, Mexico took the lead for
developing countries, particularly in the effort to include local
people and local needs in the biosphere reserve management
and research (31-34~.
Despite the success of surface area coverage and increased
research opportunities, the basic principles underlying the
biosphere reserve concept have not been followed, and the
reserves suffer from the same problems of neglect and mis-
management as do national parks. We do not want to suggest
that the idea of protected areas or the biosphere reserve
concept in themselves were wrong, but they have had little
chance of working implemented as they were. Beyond their
establishment, little was done to maintain or manage biosphere
reserves or other forms of protected areas. That is, the only
management "decision" was to keep the areas as they were, in
the hands of the people living there. In that serendipitous
"action" perhaps lies the real success of the biosphere reserve.
Beyond Protected Area Management. How can the different
Mexican approaches to conservation one that is based on
local empirical knowledge and another that is based on
national policy be reconciled to face current and tuture
threats to the environment? Neither by itself is enough.
National policies have been unable to stop trends of defores-
tation, deterioration, desertification, and resource depletion.
These alarming trends continue despite the fact that over 50%
of the country's surface area has been under some form of
environmental protection at one time or another (6~. In part,
the problem is that conservation programs are designed and
implemented without understanding or accommodating local
needs and aspirations.
Local traditional practices are not the "silver bullet" for
conservation either. They are site-specific, were developed
under earlier environmental conditions, and cannot control for
externalities that arise from global demands and free market
policies as well as local demands from a growing population.
For instance, timber in the Yucatan peninsula does not supply
the population centers there; instead, it goes to build houses
and furniture in Europe or the United States or railroad ties
in Mexico. Worse yet, the timber goes unprocessed; thus, its
highest value as lumber is exported as well.
Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 96 (1999J
In turn, the integration of conservation and development as
a legacy of the biosphere reserve concept has not succeeded in
the manner that it was intended either. Funding agencies,
convinced that this approach is the answer, have poured money
into such programs without thinking out the details or conse-
quences. In trying to meet development needs, well meaning
conservation programs often lose sight of the link between
development and environmental protection (35~. Focus may
be placed on peripheral activities such as certain agriculture
techniques, handicrafts, or cottage industries without making
the explicit connection to reduction of deforestation and other
environmental pressures or taking into consideration the
perspectives of the local land users (36~.
So what is the answer? Who has an answer at all, and what
is the appropriate and ethical level for making decisions about
future conservation practices? Out of this morass of failed and
half-tried conservation options, several things seem clear.
First, protecting surface area is not enough. Today's con-
servation sites are faced with the basic needs and rights of local
populations for food, water, shelter, and fundamental social
services. In addition, these sites are subjected to the demands
of a world that is hungry for raw resources and the demands
of a country that must balance economic debt against envi-
ronmental protection and that depends on the subsidies of
nature to do so. Relying on the encirclement of wilderness to
meet conservation needs now or in the future is short-sighted,
regardless of how we personally feel about the need for
untrammeled wild places.
Second, if predictions of large climatic shifts are correct,
these sites may not be located in critical areas for the conser-
vation of biodiversity. Conservation requires the management
and preparation for change, not the maintenance of the status
quo. We need to emphasize ex SitU as well as in situ conser-
vation efforts to keep the basic building blocks of biodiversity
for future restoration.
Third, we need to find where conservation is, instead of
where it is not. We do not tend to hear about places where
outside intervention is unnecessary because of isolation or
because of the proactive efforts of local communities or
individuals. These are the very places we actively need to seek
out, study, and compare to understand what conditions lead to
a local conservation ethic. In isolation, such small local actions
may seem insignificant, particularly in the face of global-scale
pressures, but in sum, local action may hold the basic building
blocks for developing conservation programs elsewhere.
Fourth, conservation on a larger scale needs to be based on
vertical partnerships between and the mutual accountability of
local communities and the nation. Local communities have
detailed knowledge of particular sites, whereas national levels
have a larger vision and stronger authority. Local communities
need to have the ability to hold the nation accountable to their
rights, including decisions regarding their resources, but the
nation needs to retain the responsibility to watch over the use
of critical resources, habitats, and ecosystems (37~.
Fifth, rather than focus on population numbers alone, we
need to recognize and hold accountable those sectors of the
human population that are the key extractors of resources. The
growth of the cattle herds, the extent of the agricultural
frontier, and the amount of timber harvesting all respond to
consumptive demands for beef, produce, wood, and paper
products from burgeoning and pampered populations far
removed from the supply source. All the terracing, green
mulching, selective harvesting, field rotation, crop diversity,
and reforesting in the world cannot help if the external
consumption of natural resources continues to outpace local
sustainable practices and to offer economic incentives that
out-compete long-term conservation benefits.
Is such a scenario for effective conservation research uto-
pian? No. Many of these objectives are being explored by
several grass roots organizations all over the world. In Mexico,

OCR for page 5982
Colloquium Paper: Gomez-Pompa and Kaus
for example, a small nongovernmental organization, the Pro-
grama de Accion Forestal Tropical (PROAFT), with which we
have worked since its inception, provides a good example of
this trend. Its basic approach is to recognize, encourage, and
promote conservation actions of rural communities. Every
year, participant communities present their accomplishments
and new ideas with members and guests. In these meetings,
visits are arranged; problems are presented; and initiatives are
suggested by participants. What has been accomplished is a
three-way learning process to understand methods for biodi-
versity conservation, for reinforcing local cultural values, and
for dealing with a market society (38~.
One PROAFT project undertaken recently by a group of
Mixtec peasants from the organization Ecosta Yucui Cuii
initiated the creation of a new type of protected area: the
"Cellular Campesino Reserve." Each participant contributed
a piece of their land a "cell"-ranging in size from 0.5 to 15
hectares. The total amount of protected area is 167 hectares
within an area of more than 2,000 km2. Hopefully, this step is
only the beginning. The campesinos believe that this approach
to conservation is more realistic; everybody participates, and
all are the protectors of their cells. This approach may mimic
a hypothetical conservationist approach of ancient cultures,
which would have set up patches of "left-alone" forests
throughout the environment from which biodiversity was able
to regenerate after abandonment.
PROAFT is not unique. It is encouraging to see that,
throughout the world, innovative programs and ideas are
arising that directly confront the intertwined problems of
ecological and social welfare under the threat of overpopula-
tion (39~. Community-based conservation and comanagement
regimes are no longer fringe efforts but part of mainstream
trends within research and conservation communities alike.
Future Solutions or Future Questions? Before this century
of technological and population explosion, people were not as
overtly aware or concerned about the need to conserve
resources as we are. They relied on the inherent capacity of
ecosystems to come back after disturbance. They counted on
environmental resilience. The most intriguing support for this
resilience hypothesis is our inability to find examples of major
mass plant extinctions in the tropics. Rare or endangered
species in highly disturbed regions, such as Veracruz and
Yucatan, have been found in isolated forest patches in rural
areas and in traditional agroforestry systems or other human-
impacted systems, such as along roads, in secondary vegeta-
tion, or in the few protected areas (40~.
The predicted massive extinctions in Mexico have not
occurred (41~. Is it because we do not have recent surveys? Or
is it because we have an unknown system of patches (natural
and artificial) where most species hang on in de facto "refuges"
until a new human population collapse occurs and ecological
regeneration begins one more time? Is the managed mosaic the
only option left to face the natural or human threats to
biodiversity and human survival? And what happens if the
patches disappear? Are we teetering on the edge of nature's
resilience? Of course, we need to explore what nature's
resilience means in highly populated countries such as India,
Rwanda, Mexico, the Netherlands, and Japan. It seems that
this exploration will be the real challenge for the next century.
We know that nature has proven its capacity to recuperate
under changing conditions. However, humans are running out
of time to resolve the obscene inequalities in our societies that
go hand in hand with the present state of resource use and
conservation and with the disturbing fact that millions of
people today are undernourished and impoverished. We are
running out of time to find ways to resolve these inequalities
within the present capacity of the environment, and there is
even less time considering that this capacity diminishes with
increasing population and consumption demands. We are
running out of time to convince the world of the urgency to
Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 96 (1999J 5985
find a new vision for population growth, food production,
economic development, resource use, and biodiversity conser-
vation. It is not nature that is running out of time; it is the
human species.
We thank Vernon Heywood, Brian Haley, Norman Ellstrand,
Richard Whitkus, and Scott Fedick for their comments and sugges-
tions.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
15.
16.
17.
21.
1. World Resources Institute (1996) A Guide to the Global Envi-
ronment: The Urban Environment (Oxford Univ. Press, New
York).
2. Challenger, A. (1998) Utilizacion y Conservacion de los Ecosiste-
mas Terrestres en Mexico. Pasado, Presente y Futuro (Comm. for
Biodiversity of Mexico, Natl. Autonomous Univ. of Mexico, and
Sierra Madre, Mexico City).
3. G6mez-Pompa, A., Kaus, A., Jimenez-Osornio, J., Bainbridge,
D. & Rorive, V. (1993) Sustainable Agriculture and the Environ-
ment in the Humid Tropics (Natl. Acad. Press, Washington, DC),
pp. 483-548.
4. Ramamoorthy, T. P., Bye, R., Lot, A. & Fa, J., eds. (1993)
Biological Diversity of Mexico: Origins and Distribution (Oxford
Univ. Press, New York).
5. Mittermeier, R. A. & Mittermeier, C. G. (1992) in Mexico Ante
los Retos de la Biodiversidad, eds. Sarukhan, J. & Dirzo, R. (Natl.
Comm. for Biodiversity of Mexico, Mexico City), pp. 63-73.
6. Gomez-Pompa, A. & Dirzo, R. (1995) Las Reservas de la Biosfera
y Otras Areas Naturales Protegidas de Mexico (Secretary of the
Environ., Nat. Resour. and Fisheries of Mexico, and Comm. for
Biodiversity of Mexico, Mexico City).
Bye, R. (1993) in Biological Diversity of Mexico: Origins and
Distribution, eds. Ramamoorthy, T. P., Bye, R., Lot, A. & Fa, J.
(Oxford Univ. Press, New York), pp. 707-731.
Gomez-Pompa, A. & Kaus, A. (1989) in Alternatives for Defor-
estation, ed. Anderson, A. (Columbia Univ. Press, New York), pp.
45-64.
World Commission on Environment and Development (1987)
Our Common Future (Oxford Univ. Press, New York).
Flader, S. L. & Callicott, J. B., eds. (1991) The River of the Mother
of God and Other Essays by Aldo Leopold (Univ. of Wisconsin
Press, Madison, WI).
Bonfil, G. (1987) Mexico Profundo (Editorial Grijalbo, Mexico
City).
Martin, P. S. & Wright, H. E., Jr., eds. (1967) Pleistocene
Extinctions: The Search for a Cause (Yale Univ. Press, New
Haven, CT).
. Voorhies, B. (1996) in The Managed Mosaic: Ancient Maya
Agriculture and Resource Use, ed. Fedick, S. L. (Univ. of Utah
Press, Salt Lake City), pp. 17-29.
14. Cronon, W. (1983) Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and
the Ecology of New England (Hill & Wang, New York).
Rice, D., Rice, P. M. & Deevey, E. S. (1985) in Prehistoric
Lowland Maya Environment and Subsistence Economy, Papers of
the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, ed. Pohl,
M. D. (Harvard Univ. Press, Cambridge, MA), Vol. 77, pp.
91-105.
Abrams, E. M., Freter, A. C. & Rue, D. J. (1996) in Tropical
Deforestation, eds. Sponsel, L. E., Headland, T. N. & Bailey, R. C.
(Columbia Univ. Press, New York), pp. 55-75.
Hodell, D. A., Curtis, J. H. & Brenner, M. (1995) Nature
(London) 375, 391-394.
18. Denevan, W. (1992) Ann. Assoc. Am. Geogr. 82, 369-385.
19. Dunning, N., Beach, T. & Rue, D. (1997) Ancient Mesoam. 8,
255-266.
20. Gadgil, M. & Chandran, M. D. S. (1992) Indigenous Vision:
Peoples of India Attitudes to the Environment (India Int. Cent. Q.,
New Delhi), pp. 183-187.
Gomez-Pompa, A., Flores-Guido, J. S. & Aliphat, M. (1990) Lat.
Am. Antiquity 1, 247-257.
22. Atran, S. (1993) Curr. Anthropol. 34, 633-700.
23. Fedick, S. L. (1996) in The Managed Mosaic: Ancient Maya
Agriculture and Resource Use, ed. Fedick, S. L. (Univ. of Utah
Press, Salt Lake City), pp. 107-131.
24. Gomez-Pompa, A. (1987) Mex. Stud. 3, 1-17.
25. Alcorn, J. B. (1984) Huastec Maya Ethnobotany (Univ. of Texas
Press, Austin, TX).

Bookmark this page

Important Notice

As of 2013, the National Science Education Standards have been replaced by the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), available as a print book, free PDF download, and online with our OpenBook platform.